ROCHER-ST.-POL
FRENCH TOWNS
It is a drowsy little Burgundian town, very old and ripe, with crooked streets, vistas always oblique, and steep moss-covered roofs.... I carried away from Beaune the impression of something autumnal,—something rusty yet kindly, like the taste of a sweet russet pear.
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At Le Mans as at Bourges, my first business was with the cathedral, to which I lost no time in directing my steps.... It stands on the edge of the eminence of the town, which falls straight away on two sides of it, and makes a striking mass, bristling behind, as you see it from below, with rather small but singularly numerous flying buttresses. On my way to it I happened to walk through the one street which contains a few ancient and curious houses,—a very crooked and untidy lane, of really mediæval aspect, honored with the denomination of the Grand Rue. Here is the house of Queen Berengaria.... The structure in question—very sketchable, if the sketcher could get far enough away from it—is an elaborate little dusky façade, overhanging the street, ornamented with panels of stone, which are covered with delicate Renaissance sculpture. A fat old woman, standing in the door of a small grocer's shop next to it,—a most gracious old woman, with a bristling moustache and a charming manner,—told me what the house was.
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This admirable house, in the centre of the town, gabled, elaborately timbered, and much restored, is a really imposing monument. The basement is occupied by a linen-draper, who flourishes under the auspicious sign of the Mère de Famille; and above her shop the tall front rises in five overhanging stories. As the house occupies the angle of a little place, the front is double, and carved and interlaced, has a high picturesqueness. The Maison d'Adam is quite in the grand style, and I am sorry to say I failed to learn what history attaches to its name.
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I remember going around to the church, after I had left the good sisters, and to a little quiet terrace, which stands in front of it, ornamented with a few small trees and bordered with a wall, breast high, over which you look down steep hillsides, off into the air, and all about the neighboring country. I remember saying to myself that this little terrace was one of those felicitous nooks which the tourist of taste keeps in his mind as a picture.
Henry James, A Little Tour in France.
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The Town and the River Merle
A COUNTRY TOWN
They wake you early in this hilly town. It was hardly light this morning when up and down through all its highways went a vigorous drum beat. Reluctantly peeking from the window to see the troops enter our square I was disappointed to find that one regimental drummer, marching unaccompanied and lonely, had done all this mischief. What useful purpose did he serve? After a brief respite and repose the noise of another commotion came in with the morning air; a murmur which grew and became a chatter and at last a din! The next journey to the window showed that the morning market was in full swing. Piles of fresh greens and rich-colored vegetables were tended by gnarled old peasant women sitting under widespread umbrellas of faded colors. But what a pleasant air it was that came through the opened sash; a mountain air with just that faint flavor of garlic tinging it which presages something satisfying to be found later. Strengthened for a time by our coffee and rolls we wandered through these winding streets. We saw the weather-beaten, leaden flèche of the cathedral high on the hill, but for the time were satisfied to study the many ancient houses which still remain. Their fronts framed in dark oak with a filling of amber-colored plaster topple over the public ways until they almost meet. Here and there the oak beams are carved, and grinning man or snarling monster regards you from corbel or boss. In places too there are bits of old Gothic detail and one doorway of true Flamboyant work. There is the true poetry of architecture! In England the Decorated Period gives you what is handsome, the Perpendicular what is stately. In France the cathedrals of Paris and of Rheims are splendidly serious and correct; but if in Gothic work you seek imaginative, unrestrained, carelessly free poetry it is to be found in the flowing lines and exuberant fancy of the work of the Flamboyant period.
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La Grande Rue and La Place de la République
We found much needed restoration in the hors-d'œuvres, the omelette, the cutlet, the salads and the cheese of déjeuner,—and then followed coffee under the awning of the café. Here we looked out on the Grand Place which had now become sleepy, all signs of the market and its business having disappeared. On it front the Mairie, the Bureau des Postes, the Hôtel du Lion d'Or and various centres of local commerce. We watched our neighbors in the café; the colonel with clanking sword in vigorous discussion with a local magnate; the retired bourgeois who played a desultory game of billiards or a deeply thought out match at dominoes. A quiet square it was now, and, in the shade of its plane trees, comfortable and at peace with the world, we fell asleep and made up for the wakefulness of our earlier hours.
Roberts, Letters from France.
OUR LADY OF THE ROCKS
High throned above th' encircling meadows fair
Our Lady of the Rocks holds queenly sway!
Bright kerchiefed peasants daily wend their way
With clattering sabots up the winding stair,
Pausing at each rude rock-hewn station, there
To bend the knee and many an Ave say.
Up, up they climb, their voices echoing gay
Till by the Virgin's shrine they kneel in prayer.
This is that "Jacob's Ladder" famed afar
To which the Kings of France made pilgrimage
Asking for favors both in Peace and War.
Well named!—for Heavenwards the way is tending,
And all these happy, pious folk presage
Angels of God ascending and descending.
H. L. P.
But, when so sad thou canst no sadder,
Cry, and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched between heaven and Charing Cross.
So in the night my soul, my daughter,
Cry, clinging heaven by the hems,
And lo! Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesaret but Thames.
Francis Thompson.
XVII
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L'escalier de Jacob
Oft have I seen at some cathedral door
A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er;
Far off the noises of the world retreat;
The loud vociferations of the street
Become an undistinguishable roar.
So as I enter here from day to day,
And leave my burden at this minster gate,
Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
The tumult of the time disconsolate
To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
While the eternal ages watch and wait.
How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!
This crowd of statues, on whose folded sleeves
Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves
Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers
And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers!
But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves
Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves,
And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers!
Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain,
What exultations trampling on despair,
What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong,
What passionate outcry of the soul in pain
Uprose this poem of the earth and air,
This mediæval miracle of song!
H. W. Longfellow.
XVIII
ROCHER-ST.-POL
Le Parvis de Ste Frédigonde
THE CATHEDRAL
Looking up suddenly, I found mine eyes
Confronted with the minster's vast repose.
Silent and gray as forest-leaguered cliff
Left inland by the ocean's slow retreat.
. . . . . . . . . .
It rose before me, patiently remote
From the great tides of life it breasted once,
Hearing the noise of men as in a dream
I stood before the triple northern port,
Where dedicated shapes of saints and kings,
Stern faces bleared with immemorial watch,
Looked down benignly grave and seemed to say,
Ye come and go incessant; we remain
Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past;
Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot,
Of faith so nobly realized as this.
James Russell Lowell.
CHARTRES
All day the sky had been banked with thunderclouds, but by the time we reached Chartres, toward four o'clock, they had rolled away under the horizon, and the town was so saturated with sunlight that to pass into the cathedral was like entering the dense obscurity of a church in Spain. At first all detail was imperceptible: we were in a hollow night. Then, as the shadows gradually thinned and gathered themselves up into pier and vault and ribbing, there burst out of them great sheets and showers of color. Framed by such depths of darkness, and steeped in a blaze of mid-summer sun, the familiar windows seemed singularly remote and yet overpoweringly vivid. Now they widened into dark-shored pools splashed with sunset, now glittered and menaced like the shields of fighting angels. Some were cataracts of sapphires, others roses dropped from a saint's tunic, others great carven platters strewn with heavenly regalia, others the sails of galleons bound for the Purple Islands; and in the western wall the scattered fires of the rose window hung like a constellation in an African night. When one dropped one's eyes from these ethereal harmonies, the dark masses of masonry below them, all veiled and muffled in a mist pricked by a few altar lights, seemed to symbolize the life on earth, with its shadows, its heavy distances and its little islands of illusions. All that a great cathedral can be, all the meanings it can express, all the tranquillizing power it can breathe upon the soul, all the richness of detail it can fuse into a large utterance of strength and beauty, the cathedral of Chartres gave us in that perfect hour.
Edith Wharton, Fighting France.
XIX
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Interior of the Church of Ste Frédigonde
AT HIGH MASS
Thou Who hast made this world so wondrous fair;—
The pomp of clouds; the glory of the sea;
Music of water; songbirds' melody;
The organ of Thy thunder in the air;
Breath of the rose; and beauty everywhere—
Lord, take this stately service done to Thee,
The grave enactment of Thy Calvary
In jewelled pomp and splendor pictured there!
Lord, take the sounds and sights; the silk and gold;
The white and scarlet; take the reverent grace
Of ordered step; window and glowing wall—
Prophet and Prelate, holy men of old;
And teach us children of the Holy Place
Who love Thy Courts, to love Thee best of all.
Robert Hugh Benson.
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE
All else for which the builders sacrificed, has passed away—all their living interests, and aims, and achievements. We know not for what they labored, and we see no evidence of their reward. Victory, wealth, authority, happiness—all have departed, though bought by many a bitter sacrifice. But of them, and their life and their toil upon the earth, one reward, one evidence, is left to us in those gray heaps of deep-wrought stone. They have taken with them to the grave their powers, their honors, and their errors; but they have left us their adoration.
John Ruskin.
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ROCHER-ST.-POL
Sacristy Steps in the Church of Ste Frédigonde
HUNTING THE STAG
We spent yesterday in the Forêt de C——. As the Emperor had guests we were not admitted at the Château, but we tramped for long through the woods. The grassy roads run beneath the embowering beeches straight from carrefour to carrefour. The gnarled and twisted trunks give to each tree a personal character and make it a master-piece of Nature. Of a sudden we came on the Imperial hunt winding in gay procession through the forest to its rendezvous. Hunting horns in triple rings of brass encircled the leading horsemen. From time to time we heard from them the familiar strains which echo through the Latin Quarter at Mi-Carême. Then followed in brilliant liveries a troop of lackeys, grooms, and other servants, and the pack of staghounds held in leash but sniffing and yelping. Next came the hunters themselves on high-bred mounts and in court costumes of ancient design. Lastly there were barouches and landaus carrying the ladies of the Court "en grande tenue." The sunlight flickering through the beech branches enlivened this brilliant train as it wound through the forest glades and disappeared down a green allée.
We had continued our walk for scarce a mile when, but a short distance from us, a stag crossed our path—stood startled—with head erect,—and then with confident leaps vanished in the forest just as the distant hounds became aware of him and joined in a wild chorus. In a few moments the pack came in a rush across our path. Up the different allées rode the horsemen in haste—asking of us news of the stag. We on foot joined in the pursuit,—but at last the forest swallowed one after the other, stag, and hounds, and hunters, and the sound of dog and horn.
XXI
ROCHER-ST.-POL
The Château Beaumesnil
On leaving the forest we passed the small Château. Its conical turret roofs and lofty chimneys, and its flashing finials and girouettes make a brave show above the forest trees. The terraces overlook wide meadow lands through which the river winds until it is lost in the hazy distance.
Roberts, Letters from France.
CLOTILDE
In Geraudun were brothers three,
They had one sister dear;
The cruel Baron her lord must be,
And the fellest and fiercest knight is he
In the country far or near.
He beat that lovely lady sore
With a staff of the apple green,
Till her blood flowed down on the castle floor,
And from head to foot the crimson gore
On her milk-white robe was seen.
. . . . . . . . . .
Her robe was stained with the ruby tide
Once pure as the fleece so white;
And she hied her to the river-side
To wash in the waters bright.
While there she stood three knights so gay
Came riding bold and free.
"Ho! tell us young serving maiden, pray
Where yon castle's lady may be?"
"Alas! no serving maid am I,
But the lady of yonder castle high!"
"O sister, sister, truly tell
Who did this wrong to thee?"
"Dear brothers it was the husband fell
To whom you married me."
. . . . . . . . . .
The brothers spurred their steeds in haste
And the castle soon they gained.
From chamber to chamber they swiftly passed
Nor paused till they reached the tower at last
Where the felon knight remained:
They drew their swords so sharp and bright
They thought on their sister sweet;
They struck together the felon knight,
And his head rolled at their feet!
Translated by Louis S. Costello.
XXII
ROCHER-ST.-POL
La Tour de la Dame Blanche